The New England Primer : to which is added the shorter catechism. 
Pittsburgh : Cramer & Spear, 1820.
Q 372.4122 N420C,1820

The quintessential American primer of the colonial and early republic eras (1687-1835), The New England Primer was used to teach children the alphabet and the rudiments of reading as well as Protestant Christian religious principles. According to a New York Times article from 1897, it was first published between 1687 and 1690 by printer Benjamin Harris, who had come to Boston in 1686 to escape the brief Catholic ascendancy under James II. It was based largely upon The Protestant Tutor, which he had published in England. Because there was no such thing as copyright law at the time, other publishers printed their own copies for local markets, changing it as they saw fit. Its main contents - an abecedarium (with accompanying woodcuts illustrating the letters), vowels, consonants, double letters, and syllabaries of two letters to six letter syllables -- remained relatively stable. The catechism and prayers changed according to the preferences of the printer's audience and the influence of religious movements such as the Great Awakening. Our copy from 1820 contains the Westminster Shorter Catechism (used principally by Presbyterians and by some Congregationalists and Baptists), and includes some well-known prayers, such as:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.

The alphabet section of the book has also shifted over the years, according to circumstance. When it was first published in the colonies, the letter K was represented by the rhyme, 

Our King the Good
No Man of Blood

Of  course, this would not do after the Revolutionary War, and the rhyme took on a number of versions, our copy's being: 

Since child mortality rates were so high, there was a predictable emphasis on being prepared for death:

For more images of the New England Primer, see the link below.

The cover has been repaired at some point with page 357 of another book by the same publisher:

Cuming, F. (1810). Sketches of a tour to the western country: Through the states of Ohio and Kentucky, a voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and a trip through the Mississippi territory, and part of West Florida, commenced at Philadelphia in the winter of 1807, and concluded in 1809. Pittsburgh : Cramer, Spear & Eichbaum. 

https://archive.org/details/sketchesoftourto00cumi

Portrait of Fortescue Cuming by Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, 1796. National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC.

Bibliography

Hastings, E. (2017). Children used to learn about death and damnation with their abcs. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved November 3, 2021, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/children-used-learn-about-death-and-damnation-their-abcs-180964938/

Laiosa, J. (2011). “A” is for Alligator. Children & Libraries: The Journal of the Association for Library Service to Children, 9(1), 28–33. https://cc.opal-libraries.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=60618370&site=eds-live

Lerer, S. (2006). “Thy Life to Mend, This Book Attend”: Reading and Healing in the Arc of Children’s Literature. New Literary History, 37(3), 631–642. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057965

Roberts, K. B. (2010). Rethinking The New-England Primer. The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 104(4), 489–523. https://doi.org/10.1086/680973 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/680973

Schnorbus, S. (2010). Calvin and Locke: Dueling Epistemologies in The New-England Primer, 1720-1790. Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8(2), 250–287. https://cc.opal-libraries.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=48634758&site=eds-live

Spero, P. (2010). The Revolution in Popular Publications: The Almanac and New England Primer, 1750-1800. Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8(1), 41–74. https://cc.opal-libraries.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.23546600&site=eds-live

The publisher of our copy of the New England Primer is Cramer and Spear. The founder, Zadok Cramer, was born in New Jersey in 1773, but spent his childhood in Washington, Pennsylvania, where he trained in bookbinding. He moved to Pittsburgh in 1800 and within a few years he had established a bookbindery, a press, a book & stationery store, and circulating library. Cramer published almanacs, religious and educational texts like the New England Primer, and travel narratives like Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country.

He also published The Navigator, the first navigational guide for the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Pages 146-156 of the 1808 edition give a summary of the discoveries of Lewis and Clark gleaned from a letter written by William Clark to one of his brothers in Louisville and information from the journal of Patrick Gass, a member of the expedition. Clark's letter was the first substantive account of the Lewis and Clark expedition to be published in book form. Cramer later published Patrick Gass's journal on its own.

Eventually Cramer formed a business partnership with John Spear and William Eichbaum, Jr., and the firm in 1813 issued The Western Gleaner, one of the earliest magazines west of the Alleghenies.

When Zadok Cramer died in Pensacola, Florida, of consumption (tuberculosis) in 1814, Cramer's wife, Elizabeth, continued in his place. Eichbaum retired in 1817. Cramer's daughter, Susan, replaced her mother in 1818, and the firm of Cramer and Spear continued until 1835. 

Susan Cramer

According to this website, Susan married Dr. James B. Cochran on May 13, 1829. He was a physician and graduated from Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, in 1824. They had three children, Zadoc C., James S. and Mary E.

http://genealogytrails.com/ill/stephenson/bioC.html

Bibliography

Cuming, F. (1810). Sketches of a tour to the western country: Through the states of Ohio and Kentucky, a voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and a trip through the Mississippi territory, and part of West Florida, commenced at Philadelphia in the winter of 1807, and concluded in 1809. Pittsburgh : Cramer, Spear & Eichbaum. 
https://archive.org/details/sketchesoftourto00cumi

Dahlinger, C. W. (1916). Pittsburgh: A sketch of its early social life. New York and London: G. P Putnam's Sons. http://www.info-ren.org/projects/btul/exhibit/neighborhoods/downtown/down_n124.html

Iacone, A. A. (1990). Early Printing in Pittsburgh, 1786-1856. Pittsburgh History. http://www.info-ren.org/projects/btul/exhibit/neighborhoods/downtown/down_n43.html

Loomis’s Magazine Almanac (1835). http://pittsburgh-port-to-the-west.com/cramer.html

Stephenson County, Illinois Genealogy and History. http://genealogytrails.com/ill/stephenson/bioC.html

Thode, S. A. (2017). Geography as a How-to Guide: Zadok Cramer’s Pittsburgh Navigator and the Uses of Maps and Texts in Early American Western Settlement along the Ohio River, 1800–1813. In Hilaire-Pérez, L., Nègre, V., Spicq, D., & Vermeir, K. (Eds.), Le livre technique avant le xxe siècle: À l'échelle du monde. CNRS Éditions. doi:10.4000/books.editionscnrs.27712 
https://books.openedition.org/author?page=author&name=thode+simon+andre&lang=en 

The Western Gleaner; or, Repository for Arts, Sciences, and Literature (1813-1814). http://cc.opal-libraries.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/publication/24183?accountid=28517

The Pool Family

On the cover of our copy of the New England Primer, you can see two handwritten names, Rhoda Pool and John Pool. Research indicates that they were the children of William and Elizabeth Pool, who lived in Washington, Pennsylvania until 1813 when they moved to Richland County, Ohio, near Mansfield. Rhoda was born on November 2, 1811 in Washington, PA, and John was born on February 9, 1821 in Richland County, OH.

Since the Pools came from Western Pennsylvania, it stands to reason that the books they acquired also came from that area, perhaps purchased for them by family and friends there. Maybe Rhoda was using the Primer to teach her little brother how to read and write? We'll never know for sure, but what a charming little time capsule this book is!

What happened to the Pool children?

Rhoda married William Post in 1833 and had eight children. She died in 1856 and is buried in the Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Richland Co., Ohio.

John married Mary Hartupee in 1847, had ten children, and lived on a farm near Upper Sandusky, Ohio. 

Bibliography

Keifer, S. Jane Harris. (1888). Genealogical and biographical sketches of the New Jersey branch of the Harris family, in the United States. Madison, Wis.: Democrat printing company. https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~confido/genealogy/chap13a.htm